Lessons on Love
by Firenzie
Summary: On their 1 month anniversary of dating, Mimi tells Matt something, but his reaction is unexpected. Tai and Sora try to help them out, and Sora teaches Mimi some important lessons about love.
1. "I Love You..."

Love is Complicated

Part 1

By Firenze

Hey, this is a Mimato and partially Taiora, so if you're really, seriously against these couplings and can't stand them, then don't read this; and if you want to nonetheless, don't flame me!

Disclaimer: Why do we need these??? Everyone knows it doesn't belong to us!Duh, they belong to FOX KIDS, Bandai, Saban, Toei Animation, and all that other stuff everyone already knew.

***

It was a beautiful, starry night, and a romantic full moon was out. It was perfect since the night was Mimi Tachikawa and Yamato Ishida's one month anniversary of them going out with each other. Things between them had been going very smoothly, and Mimi figured it was about time to take things to another level in their relationship.

Matt had invited Mimi to his house for a very nice dinner. The meal was only ruined when Mr. Ishida kept popping in to check on what they were doing, and most likely to make sure that they weren't doing anything like making out or something. 

They were anxious to get away from the house to be alone, so they walked to the park. Once they got there, they sat down on a park bench. Matt slid his arm around Mimi, and she rested her head on his shoulder.

"This has been a great one month anniversary," Matt whispered.

"Yeah," Mimi murmured. "It was so sweet and romantic." He took her hand and leaned over to kiss her. Mimi closed her eyes and smiled to herself. "I love you."

Matt backed away as fast as lightning. A look of panic and some terror had crossed his face. "Wh—wh—what?" he asked in shock.

Mimi looked a bit surprised. "I love you, Matt."

_Oh no, what do I do? What am I supposed to say in this type of situation? I'm not ready for this! I've only been with her for a month; I'm only fourteen! I can't handle this type of thing! _His palms began to sweat and he was silently freaking out. "Oh," he said lamely.

"Oh?!" she asked in amazement. "I tell you I love you, and you say 'Oh'?! Don't you love me?" she shrieked hysterically.

"Mimi, I –"

"I don't believe you!" she cried. "I wasted so much time with you! We're through!" Mimi buried her face in her hands and ran off, crying unstoppably.

"Mimi!" he yelled after her, and started to run. 

Someone grabbed his shoulder and stopped him. "Give it up, man." It was Tai, and he looked very serious. "Just let her go."

"I can't!" he shouted, struggling against Tai's hold on him. "Tai, I have to do something, I just broke her heart!"

"That's why you can't go after her. She thinks she loves you, but you don't love her back, and now is not the time to talk to her. She's too heartbroken and it'll take time for her to accept this. Once she calms down, you can tell her," he said pretty calmly.

"She needs some cheering up!" he protested.

"But she won't find it from you, right after what happened."

"Tai, I really like Mimi, I do, but I'm just not ready for this! She loves me, but I don't feel that serious about her."

He nodded. "I understand. It's only been a month, and we're just pre-teens!" 

"That's what I thought!"

"Look, just give it some time; she'll get better in a while," Tai said.

Matt collapsed back onto the bench. "Has Sora ever put you in this kind of situation?" he asked, depressed.

"No, never. I know she'd never do that."

He sighed deeply and ran his fingers through his hair. "So what now?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. Want to come over to my house and play some video games? It'll get your mind off everything."

"Nah, I'm not in the mood right now." He hung his head, shoved his hands in his pockets, and walked away. "I'll see you sometime."

"Okay, later." Tai walked away too. He should probably find Sora and get her to cheer Mimi up. Hopefully, it would work better than he had done with Matt.

***

_Ring, ring!_

_ _

Sora woke up abruptly. She had been having a very peaceful nap after soccer practice had run especially late. It turned out, she had been sleeping for a few hours already, and it was around eight forty-five or so.

_Ring, ring!_

_ _

"I'm coming," she called to no one in particular. Her mother wasn't home yet for some reason. She picked up the phone. "Hello?"

"Sora?" asked a sobbing, unsteady voice. She distinctly heard a nose being blown.

"Yes?" she asked uncertainly. _Who is this?_

_ _

As if reading her mind, the miserable voice on the other end replied, "This is Mimi. I'm sorry to bother you right now, but –"

"It's all right," she said. _Is this truly Mimi? _She had heard her cry before, but not at all like this. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing…just Matt and I –" She broke out into hysterical sobs.

"I'm guessing the anniversary has gone wrong?" she said softly.

"Oh, it was horrible, Sora!" She blew her nose again, and paused to wipe her eyes, no doubt. "Look, I hate to cry, and especially on the phone, and I'm sorry for bothering you so late at night, so I'll go now."

"Wait! Mimi – no, hold on --!" she said frantically. "Mimi, don't hang u–"

_Click. _Sora heard the dial tone. She thought of calling Mimi back, but she didn't seem in the mood to talk. "I wonder what happened," she said, scratching her head.Checking her watch, it was 8:56 pm. _I should get to sleep now. I can try to find Mimi in the morning._

_ _

***

Matt woke up the next morning with a horrible nightmare. It was when he told Mimi he wasn't in love with her. He had visions of her very depressed and devastated, and in the end, she commit suicide by drinking poison and stabbing herself in the heart, as she jumped off a high cliff.

Matt was covered in a cold sweat when he sat up abruptly, breathing heavily. In the very end of his dream, he had been doing some heavy thinking. He realized that he really loved Mimi, and he searched everywhere to find her. He found her just as she was falling; a dagger plunged into her heart, her face deathly green. 

"I LOVE YOU, MIMI!" he had shouted, out of control with tears. He watched as she fell onto a large rock jutting out from the cliffside. 

Matt was pretty sure he had screamed that out loud right before he woke up.

"Matt?" his dad asked, coming in.

"Huh? Oh, hey, Dad," he said nervously.

"Are you alright?" his dad asked, with a slight frown and a crease in his forehead.

A sweat drop appeared on the back of his blond head. "Yeah, I'm fine. Just a bad dream, that's all," he said hurriedly.

Mr. Ishida looked a bit suspicious, but he let it pass. "Well, okay. I'm going to work now, and I should be back around six."

"Okay. Bye, Dad!"

He left Matt's bedroom and, Matt breathed a sigh of relief. He was glad he didn't do any questioning on what he and Mimi had been doing last night or something like that. 

Matt took a shower and got dressed. After a quick breakfast, he went right to the phone.

He dialed a number quickly and waited as it rang a few times. It was nine something in the morning, and he doubted he was even up yet, but –

"Hello?" asked a cheerful voice.

He twisted the phone cords impatiently in his fingers, but spoke in a rational tone. "Oh, hi, Kari, is that you? This is Matt. Can I talk to Tai? It's really important –"

***

I'm ending part 1 here, though this wasn't meant to be two parts at first. That was a dumb place to cut it off, but oh well. Just review and tell me what you think; and if I get enough positive reviews, I'll get the final part up. It's already done anyway. Thanks for reading! 


	2. "Love is Complicated..."

Love Is Complicated 

Part 2

By Firenze

_ _

_Ding-dong!_

_ _

Mimi woke up to her loud doorbell. "Someone get it," she murmured into her pillow.

_Ding-dong!_

_ _

"Mom," she complained, "get the door!"

_Ding-dong! Ding-dong! _

_ _

No one was answering the door, and the person was obviously not going to go away. "Fine, fine," she said grouchily, pulling on a pink bathrobe and her slippers. "I'll get it." 

Then she remembered her mom shopped at the market every Sunday, and her dad had work. She rushed to the door and opened it widely after two more rings.

Sora was standing in the doorway. "Hi, Mimi. Sorry to wake you up, but we need to talk."

"Oh, this is about –" Mimi's voice cracked, and she stopped.

"It's about Matt," Sora finished for her, very gently, but yet, Mimi flinched. "We really need to talk about this." And she obviously wasn't going to take no for an answer.

So Mimi wiped her tear-outlined eyes with her hand and let Sora inside. She didn't want to even talk about what had happened between Matt and her; remembering was hard enough. She let Sora sit on the couch and she slumped into her father's armchair.

Sora was silent for a while, and she fingered her silver locket before she began to speak up. "Tai –"

"What does he have to do with this?" she asked, slightly crossly. She wasn't going to compare her and Tai's perfect relationship to Matt and her failed one, was she?

"He caught up with Matt last night," she continued softly. "Right after the – incident."

"So?"

"So he knows what happened. He called me early this morning and told me everything. He told me Matt was pretty torn, and he's going to meet him at the park later to talk."

"Matt should be torn!" Mimi shrieked. "He broke my heart and ruined our relationship!"

"Mimi, please calm down," Sora coaxed. "Matt was hurt because what he had done, that's true. But it's not all his fault –"

"So now it _mine_?"

"You're being irrational, Mimi. Look, it isn't his entire fault. Just like there are two sides to a story, there are two sides to a break-up. Never is only one person responsible, you never break up for just a simple reason –"

"He doesn't love me!" she interrupted again.

Sora nodded gravely. "I know. And I see where he's coming from too."

Mimi took a few deep breaths to calm herself down. "What do you mean?"

"What I'm saying is, Matt may be right," she said quietly.

She reacted a lot better than Sora expected, since she based it on her last outburst. "How is he right?"

"He's right that he isn't in love with you." Mimi let out a small sob, and Sora leaned over to put a comforting hand on her shoulder. "Look, Mimi. Matt is fourteen; you're thirteen. Basically, we're still pretty young. You two have only been dating for one month. I don't really see how it's possible for both of you to fall in love so quickly when we're still teenagers."

"That isn't true; you and Tai have only been together for two months, and you're in love," she argued.

Sora backed away in shock. "No we're not!"

"So you're saying you're not in love with Tai?"

"YES!" she cried. "Well, I love Tai, but I'm not –" she trailed off, babbling.

Mimi blinked in disbelief. "Then why are you together?"

She sighed. "I see the problem here."

"Problem?" she repeated faintly.

"Mimi, you have absolutely no idea what love is. You can't even see the difference between loving, like caring about someone, and being in love."

"There's a difference?" she wondered.

"I rest my case," Sora said firmly. "Look, when I said we need to talk – I meant, I need to talk, and you need to listen and tell me you understand. Okay?" Mimi nodded. "Love is something that takes a long time to learn about. Basically, because _love takes time._ Do you get it?"

"What do you mean?" she asked softly.

"Like I said earlier, it isn't normal for two teenagers to actually fall in love in just a month. It's just that some people don't know what love is really about. Well, you can never really know what love is all about –" She paused, took a deep breath, and started again. 

"Okay, let me say this. _Love is complicated._ It isn't something you figure out when you're thirteen years old. I told you love takes time, and that's true; it's because it's so puzzling. It's something you wait for, but it eventually comes along. 

"Now I'm talking about falling in love, but you can always have love in your heart. You see, you don't love your parents like you think you love Matt, right? The love you're talking about is actual romantic feelings.

"_Love is a commitment. _By saying you truly love someone, that means that they're the one you want be with forever, always at your side, always together. It means that you can't just back away when things get tough, because _love is hard. _That's why it takes so long to understand, and still you can never know the real meaning of love, because it's confusing. Are you still with me?"

Mimi was surprisingly silent, so that could mean a few things. She was paying rabid attention to this speech, she was entirely lost, or still moping about Matt. "I'm listening, I hear you. I think I sort of understand."

"Good. Do you still think you're in love with Matt?" Sora inquired.

"I don't know –" she began.

"Do you still think you're in love with Matt?" she repeated, more firmly.

Mimi hung her head, but she was obviously nodding.

"Oh, boy. This is harder than I thought. Well…what now? Ummm…a lot of people never find love at all. They can search for it, but _love isn't something you can buy from a store, or find on the street_. For most people, it only comes by once, and it takes a long time to realize it, if they ever do. You do know that _love doesn't always have happy endings_?"

She bit her lip. "Ummm…"

"Take Mr. Ishida and Ms. Takaishi for example. They were in love, they had two kids, but then they divorced. _Love doesn't always last._ Because it takes a lot of things for love, and you have to really work to keep it strong. I'm afraid that two teenagers won't have all they need to make it last, even if it is love, because _first_ _love is always the hardest_ –"

Mimi was getting impatient with Sora's speech. It was taking a long time, and anyways, how would she know if she wasn't in love. "If love really is complicated and all that stuff, how do you know so much about it?" she demanded.

"Well," Sora replied, tracing the heart on her locket, which was identical to the one on her crest, "I don't know, call it intuition." _Obviously, I have the crest of love, I think I'd know a thing or two about it,_ she thought dryly. She cleared her throat and went back into lecture mode. 

"Without my knowing it, my mom taught me a lot about love. At first I thought she didn't love me, but see, I'm getting back to the other thing. What I want to say is that my mom knows about love because she experienced it first hand. She told me everything she learned from it, so I wouldn't make the mistake of saying I was in love when I wasn't – and I'm not.

"You don't need to be in love to hold a relationship together, all you really need is a simple crush. Anyway, middle school crushes are never serious. You do have that general, 'I care a lot about you if you're in trouble' kind of love, though. Maybe you had just confused the two."

Mimi nodded. "Maybe I have. And I scared Matt away with my stupid mistake."

"It was an easy one to make though," Sora told her. "And I know for a fact that he still likes you as much as ever, but he wants you to realize it isn't true love you're dealing with."

"I think I finally get it," she said, finally full of understanding.

"Good," Sora said happily, clapping her hands together. "Hey, do you want to go for a walk?"

"Sure." Mimi quickly took a shower and changed, left a note for her parents, and they went.

***

Tai paced back and forth, and checked his watch for an astounding twenty-ninth time. It was 11:20. "She should have been here," he muttered.

"Who?" Matt wondered, sitting on the same bench where he had broken Mimi's heart. "Tai, I need to tell you something –"

"All right." He turned to look at him, but made sure he'd be able to see her in his side vision if she happened to come walking by. "What is it?"

"I had a bad nightmare last night. It was horrible." He trembled a bit, remembering how scary it had been for him.

"What happened?"

Matt explained the whole dream. How he broke Mimi's heart, thought for a long time about it, realized that he did love her, but then she commit suicide in three different ways. When he finished telling Tai, the same cold sweat had broken over him again.

"So you think that means you have to tell her you love her before she does something drastic?" Tai wondered, facing Matt, but peering to the right.

"Yeah, I think it was some kind of message."

"Maybe you interpreted it wrong," Tai suggested.

"It was pretty clear-cut," he said with annoyance. "It doesn't take Einstein to interpret the meaning."

"Whatever," Tai said shrugging, and thankfully, he spotted Sora walking along with Mimi. He rushed to her, gave her a quick kiss, and muttered, "How'd it go?"

"Great," she said, and dragged him away. "Let's give them some privacy alone together," she whispered in his ear.

"Hi, Matt," Mimi said shyly.

Matt looked at his shoes. "Hey, Mimi." She was looking pretty cheerful. Why?

"So how are – things?" 

"Good," he said, just because he realized she was trying to spark up a conversation.

She stood pretty still for a while, pondering on what to say. "Can I have a seat?"

"Sure," he muttered, and scooted over on the bench to give her room. She sat down, and they were silent for a while.

"So I've been thinking –" they both began at the same time.

"No, you first," they said simultaneously.

"No you," they said again. The two of them giggled nervously.

"You go first," Mimi said finally. "Please."

"Okay." He scratched his head. Suddenly, he was nervous about telling her. He awkwardly told Mimi about his dream last night.

She nodded along, without saying anything.

"So?" he demanded.

"So, what?"

"What do you think?" 

"That's interesting," she commented.

"That's interesting?" he asked incredulously.

"Now you see how I felt," was her reply.

"Anyway," Matt said. "I've been doing a lot of thinking. I know we had a fight, but I wanted to know if you'd put it behind us and still go out with me."

She smiled happily. "Of course! We had never really broken up –"

He grinned. " 'We're through,' usually only means one thing –"

"Matt?"

"What?"

"Shut up," she murmured, and pulled him into a kiss.

They inched closer, and while they did, Matt whispered, "I've been thinking a whole lot, especially about the dream. And now I realize…" Right as their lips were about to touch, he added, "I love you."

Mimi gently pushed him back. She was grinning, like she expected that. "No, you don't," she giggled.

"Yes, I do," he claimed. I've been thinking about this for a long time, and –"

"No, you _don't_," she repeated confidently. "Because love is complicated…"

***

The End

Cheesy, huh? No, tell me what you think (since lots of you like cheesiness for some reason). I wrote this since I'm kind of getting fed up with 11 years olds saying they love each other and stuff (because face it, I never did that, and neither do any other 5th graders!). I'm sure you probably knew that though, since I wrote it in nearly all my reviews of those who did a romance fic. Anyway, please review this!

Disclaimer: Well, all the characters here belong to who made them and stuff, not me.


End file.
